The Hidden Blade by Sherry Thomas

Marland. I thought you loved—”
    I thought you loved me
. Except she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
    Herb was wrong. Leighton was not kind—he was capable of all kinds of atrocities.
    “Do we…do we really disgust you so much?” Mother’s voice had become barely above a whisper.
    “You have no idea how ashamed I am to be related to you and that child of yours.”
    Her hand closed into a fist. He fully expected her to hit him.
    “If you really feel so,” she said, her voice hoarse, defeated, “if you really feel so, then perhaps Marland and I ought to go.”
    Why did she not realize that no trespass on her part could ever equal the cruelty he displayed now? Why did she let him ride roughshod over her with his trumped-up moral outrage, when she ought to strike him for his utter want of propriety and respect?
    Why did the good people of the world so meekly allow themselves to be ill treated and trampled over?
    “Yes,” he said, “I feel so. Very strongly. Very, very strongly.”

    Mother and Marland left the next morning. Marland cried and struggled. It took both Mother and his nursemaid to force him into his carriage.
    Leighton did not wave good-bye. He gazed somewhere above his brother’s red, bawling face. They had gone to Father’s grave at the crack of dawn and made a honeysuckle wreath together. He would remember that instead, and Marland’s plump little hands gently patting the mound of earth on which they had placed the wreath.
    Sleep tight
, Marland had said to Father.
Sleep tight
.
    Deep in the big trunk that held many of Mother’s books, Leighton had hidden a package that contained everything he could not bear for Sir Curtis to get his hands on: hundreds of photographs, just as many letters from Herb, and, of course, the beautiful jade tablet that had been wretchedly difficult for him to let go of.
    He had tried to write a letter, to explain and to apologize. In the end he had burned all his drafts. Better for Mother to believe that he was as monstrous and callous as Sir Curtis. She would be safer that way, and Marland too.
    The carriage clattered along the drive, becoming smaller and smaller. Then it was gone.
    And he was all alone.

Chapter 7
    The Apprentice
    Mother studied the finely textured
shuen
paper spread on her desk. She had finished the background of a new ink painting, a mountain with ridges sharp as swords.
    Ying-ying had been grinding ink for her. Now she picked up the massage roller made of polished agate and applied it to just beneath Mother’s shoulders.
    Mother glanced back, astonished. “When did you become such an example of filial piety?”
    Ying-ying didn’t say anything. When she looked upon Mother now, the sensation in her heart was very nearly one of pain. Several times alone in her room she’d broken down in tears as she imagined what Mother must have gone through in those darkest days of her life.
    She was at once beyond happy for her—that she had found peace, quiet, and security at last—and beyond frightened that it wouldn’t last.
    “Does Da-ren like paintings?” she asked.
    She had always been curious about Da-ren, but she could not remember the last time she’d posed a question about him directly to Mother.
    Mother picked up a smaller brush and dipped it in the ink Ying-ying had freshly made. “I suppose he would, if he had time for such things.”
    Ying-ying set down the roller and returned to her station beside the ink stone. “Why is he so busy?”
    “Well, he is an important adviser at court. And he has many ideas for…reforms.” Her tone turned slightly grim as she uttered the last word.
    “Are reforms not good?”
    Mother looked out the window at the caged songbirds that hung beneath the eaves—and the blue sky beyond. “The dowager empress was in favor of sweeping changes when the emperor first ascended the throne. But her appetite for reform has grown less and less, while Da-ren aims for more and more. He wants to make Western sciences